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Introduction
Another year has passed and a whole bunch of devices has gone through our office. We have completed more than 80 smartphone reviews in 2018 and what an exciting year in tech it was!
We saw the infamous display notch gain popularity and then shrink down to a punch hole in the screen. The under-display fingerprint sensors grew in availability and they're finally usable. Face Unlock was gaining traction throughout the year, while the number of cameras on the back of the phones is on the rise. Fast charging has reached new and almost unbelievable highs. There were many surprises this year - good and bad - and new trends emerged that will continue to develop throughout 2019.
The smartphone makers have had a tough year because the competition was fierce. Some companies just rose the prices, others failed to understand the market at all, then once popular brands began to face, and finally - some new ones made phones to shake the whole market.
We enjoyed reviewing those smartphones and following all new trends. We took notes of what we observed, and we decided to wrap up this 2018 year with an overview of the most interesting events.
Enjoy!
The Notch race
There is no doubt the trend of all trends this year was the notch. That infamous screen cutout, which may have been around before the iPhone X, but Apple was the one to make it popular. And then it spread like wildfire in mere weeks and before we knew it, most of the smartphones had a notch.
The consumers' uproar was probably as loud as the companies' PR campaigns, which tried to convince us to buy those phones with Full View, Full Vision, Super Retina HD, Full Screens or whatever else names they came up with. The push for the notch could hardly be justified by the more modern looks it gave the device but as the practical merits were few. But regardless of the impetus and whether we like it or not, the industry has moved in that direction for good.
The first Android smartphone manufacturers bragged about having smaller notches than Apple while conveniently overlooking the fact none of their notches housed anything remotely similar to Apple's Face ID scanning tech. But the mere fact that those companies incessantly compared their products to Apple's confirmed that they continued to be the trendsetter in the industry in many ways.
In the second part of the year the new waterdrop-shaped notches took over. Oppo and vivo had different implementations of how a dewdrop should look like, but they were both on the right path - the one that will eventually shrink this cutout into oblivion. Now pretty much all manufacturers have at least one model with a dewdrop notch and we can't say we object - if there isn't going to be any advanced face-scanning tech inside this spot, why not make it as small as possible?
Taking this concept further, at the end of the year we saw the first punch-hole camera designs appear. We're not even sure if this qualifies to be called a notch any longer. We still haven't decided on whether we find it nicer and more practical than a dewdrop notch, but we guess it will be up to the consumer to make that call.
Huawei Mate 20's dewdrop notch next to Honor View 20's punch hole camera
Samsung and Sony were among the few makers to avoid the notch race in 2018. But it's hard to say whether that's due to an unusual reluctance to follow Apple or merely they are slower to adapt their product planning than smaller companies. Rumors have it that Samsung will be soon launching new OLEDs with different types of notches so 2019 may take the front facing camera to new and surprising places.
Meanwhile, we can only hope nobody takes notes from the Sharp Aquos R2 Compact and its two notches, or as the internet quickly branded those - the notch and the crotch.
Insanely fast quick charging
The fast charging options have been around for a few years now but it was only in 2018 that we saw them evolve substantially. Sometimes it's hard to tell who is who in the world of smart charging standards but Qualcomm's Quick Charge has traditionally been the most widely used. Oppo and Huawei, however, has been leading the innovation race for some time now and both companies reached new highs this year.
At the beginning of this year Huawei had probably the fastest available charging standard - Super Charge at 22.5W, followed by Oppo's VOOC and OnePlus Dash at 20W.
Both Huawei and Oppo, however, reached new heights in 2018. Huawei launched the Mate 20 Pro with a new 40W version of its Super Charge. Then Oppo pushed the Find X Lamborghini Edition and R17 Pro with a 50W Super VOOC charging.
Not to be outdone, OnePlus upped their charging game by offering their 30W Warp Charge, currently available only on the OnePlus 6T McLaren Edition.
We've already tested those proprietary charging standards and while Oppo and Huawei are still leading, OnePlus and vivo are catching up.
Wireless charging speeds have improved, too. The Pixel 3 and 3 XL, as well as the LG V40 and the Razer 2, can all do 10W wireless charging. Unfortunately, for now, those chargers are either proprietary or hard to get or quite expensive or all of the above at the same time.
The return of the quirky ones
Before the age of the touchscreens we had very different phones - swivels, sliders, clamshells, among others. The makers had the freedom to experiment with form factors and even when it didn't work, it brought along brand awareness and recognition.
But now that the smartphone industry has moved to all-touch devices - the touchscreens are a massive blocker to that creative freedom. The surprise this year is that despite the notch being on the rise, we saw the arrival of a few ingenious form factors for all-screen smartphones which offered an uncommon placement of the front-facing camera.
The first design had the selfie camera mounted on a pop-up platform. Vivo released the NEX S, which had a pop-up selfie camera on a motorized platform no bigger than a SIM slot. The motorized mechanism allowed it to pop out automatically whenever needed.
Then Oppo came up with another take on the motorized pop-up platform - but this time it was bigger and housed both the front and rear cameras. The entire top part of the Oppo Find X popped up and while this meant you would have to use it much more often than vivo's, the whole thing looked arguably cooler.
And finally, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 and the Honor Magic 2 raised the bar. Those two makers also put the camera setups on sliders, but those require manual sliding up just like back in the old days. The slider mechanisms on the Mi Mix 3 and Magic 2 seem quite reliable and are very easy to operate - not to mention that the mechanical up-then-down fidgety action feels surprisingly satisfying with a dash of a retro vibe.
And while we are talking about slider and retro vibe, the Nokia 8110 4G really hit the bullseye this year. The rebirth of the notorious banana phone was long rumored, and when it happened, everyone was excited. While the new Nokia 8110 didn't impress much in the end, we were still thrilled to have a modern version of this handset and enjoyed sliding its cover up and down for no apparent reason.
The recently unveiled NEX Dual Display Edition took another approach to solving the challenge of having an all-screen front. Instead of worrying about fitting a secondary camera on the front - why not mount a secondary display at the back? A secondary display isn't a new concept - we can trace it back to the year 2002 or just look at the more recent phones like the Meizu Pro 7 and 7 Plus. With the NEX Dual Display, however, 'secondary' doesn't mean 'inferior' as the screen on the back is a high-res Super AMOLED unit, which allows operating the phone quite conveniently.
And before we are done with this quirky category, we'd like to mention the ROG Phone here but for an entirely different reason. The ROG phone by Asus is a powerful flagship smartphone whichever way you look at it, but what made it special is the entire suite of attachable docks and accessories. They expand its capabilities almost like an Iron Man suit and even though that means it's a quirky fella, it also makes it rather cool (with the right audience).
The multi-camera smarphones
Advancements in processing power has led a handful of camera innovations in 2018 but the most important one remains the introduction of multi-camera setups.
Just when everybody hopped on the dual-camera bandwagon, we witnessed the emergence of three- and four-camera smartphones.
Huawei kept improving its triple camera with the new Mate 20 series - the second-generation setup had a zoom camera, a wide-angle, and a super-wide-angle snapper. We also saw Honor doing its own take on the triple camera with the Magic 2 - it lacked a zoom camera, replaced by a depth sensor.
LG also launched a phone with a triple camera, too, the V40 ThinQ flagship - with a similar logic to Huawei Mate 20's setup. But LG was first to put an ultra-wide-angle camera on the G5 back in 2016, so nobody should be thinking of LG as playing catchup with Huawei. This year LG's traditional dual camera - wide + ultra-wide - evolved by adding a telephoto cam in the mix and this was quite expected actually.
Samsung launched a mid-ranger with a triple camera - the Galaxy A7. It's nothing impressive - a 24MP one, an 8MP ultra-wide, and a depth sensor, so the triple thing seemed more like a marketing trick. But it certainly makes a statement of the direction the industry will be going to.
But shortly after the Galaxy A7, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy A9 with a quadruple camera at the back - same as the A7, but with an additional 10MP telephoto snapper. That would be so easy to market, for sure, even if its camera performance is not stellar.
And while the Nokia 9 is still under wraps, all the rumors point to a six-camera setup at the back. Just wow!
Obviously, the camera trend is gaining momentum and we expect the triple and quadruple camera setups to become the new normal in the high-end.
Image-stacking during capturing is another camera advancement made available across many devices this year thanks to the overall jump in processing power. It seems to solve the inherently limited dynamic range of these small cameras and it also helps get clearer and more
Digital well-being is now a thing
With the advancements in smartphones, we find more and more uses for them sometimes even replacing home computers to some users. With mobile applications and games designed in the most addictive way possible, it didn't take long until overuse of the always available computer screen in our pocket became an issue.
And while it's unrealistic to impose limits on smartphone use, in 2018 Google and Apple both started providing the tools to keep track of your smartphone use or in other words - your digital wellbeing.
Apple has Screen Time for iOS, which tracks your app usage and issues various warnings or can even restrict certain apps from launching if you have self-imposed limits. It can sync your screen time across all Apple devices and thus apply those restrictions in a more meaningful way.
Google has Digital Wellbeing, which does the same thing as Apple's, but if you impose restrictions can be way more aggressive. While Apple allows you to override the lockout of an app right away, Google isn't as liberal. If you want to continue using the app that ran out of screen time, you'd have to dig into settings and change the limit.
Those software restrictions put by the users won't do much if the users don't have the willpower to follow them, but they could be useful as parental controls for children.
AI is just another name for data-driven optimizations
And finally, while we are on the software side of things, let's talk about AI.
Phone manufacturers made a big deal of AI being available on phones and in 2018 even midrange phones started to get dedicated hardware acceleration chips for AI tasks.
But even with hardware acceleration onboard, the marketing machine is a bit misleading regarding the scale and reach of the AI capabilities.
When you say AI, everybody imagines a thinking robot and PR is keen on selling this image.
But the reality is that AI is a data-driven software optimization, which allows the smart device to pick up patterns and without having to be programmed specifically for them.
When we say patterns, we mean app usage patterns or phone wake patterns or even scene patterns, patterns in your photos so it can recognize the objects in them and patterns in the scenes you take pictures of so it can adjust colors and exposure.
Without meaning to downplay the entire progress made in this direction over the past year, we just want to set the facts straight.
AI doesn't mean your smartphone has a robotic mind. It means that the computer system has been primed through the methods of machine learning to recognize patterns it has never seen before. It's able to recognize that you are pointing your phone to a pet even though it has never seen your pet before. It's able to recognize a particular human face across many photos in your Gallery app even though it has never seen it before. It's able to show all the picture of bottles or receipts you've ever taken with a simple search. But the functionality doesn't stretch much further than that.
We're sure we'll be hearing more of AI in 2019 but it would take a bigger leap in functionality to get us bitter tech reviewers excited.
At least that means we're nowhere near close to the machines taking over our world. Right? Right?
Skyrocketing prices
In 2018 the trend for increasing phone prices continued and we've reached new heights. Apple was the biggest offender with the iPhone XS Max price going through the roof (that's without even considering the 512MB model). But we're seeing this across the industry with just a few exceptions. Innovation and improved features in each new model now come hand in hand with steady price increases and we saw rising prices across all flagships including OnePlus, Samsung, Huawei, Sony, and LG.
The bad news is that trend of sky-high prices will continue throughout 2019. Because while a few of those brands may have seen increased production and patent costs, others just do it because the others do it.
But there is some good news, too. In the wake of those $1000+ flagships, another class of smartphones emerged...
The market disruptors
Xiaomi's the Pocophone F1 really turned upside down our perceptions of how much a phone with top-of-the-line specs can cost. In the light of the overly expensive headliners, Xiaomi pulled a OnePlus-like move and launched a true flagship killer. The Pocophone F1 had everything that was considered cutting-edge at the time, from screen, chipset, through the camera, battery, and connectivity. But the price, oh that sweet price, is what put the Pocophone on everyone's watchlist - it launched at INR 20,000 in India and at about €300 in Europe. Enough said!
Sure, OnePlus was leading the rebellion against the flagship clique, and with the OnePlus 6 and 6T it's quite a factor, but Xiaomi dethroned it from the killer spot in 2018.
It will be hard for Xiaomi to repeat the Pocophone F1's epic success as much as it was hard for OnePlus to follow up on their original flagship killer - the OnePlus One. But both makers are putting effort to go against the grain of the current market reality and they are winning in their niche. So, please, keep that up!
Finally, Realme, a former Oppo subsidiary, literally conquered the entry-level market in India with unbeatable budget prices for mid-range-specced smartphones. Realme 1 and 2 Pro are still among, if not the best value offers in the few Southeast Asia markets they operate in and we can see this trend continuing throughout 2019 as well.
So, while the giants in the industry sat in their comfortable chairs serving us with incremental upgrades at higher prices, it was the smallest Chinese companies that seized the opportunity and rose to fame riding a similar wave as OnePlus back in the day.
The rise and fall of the smartphone makers in 2018
A lot has happened this year and the smartphone landscape has shifted for good. Some companies rose, others fell. Some hit the jackpot, others faded to irrelevance. Some surprised us, other disappointed us.
Samsung, one of the biggest smartphone makers in the world, launched some of the best Android flagships, no two words about that. The Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy Note9 are among the best-selling Android phones this year and they delivered on all their promises. Some of the updates turned incremental and we doubt many Galaxy S8/Note8 owners found practical reasons for an upgrade, but this can't take away the greatness the ninth series achieved.
But while doing great in the flagship bracket, Samsung completely failed to understand the budget and mid-range market. People are no longer loyal to brands when it comes to their hard-earned money. Not in times when OnePlus is selling flagships cheaper than Samsung's mid-rangers, while Xiaomi's Mi A phones cost a third of what the Koreans are asking for the most current Galaxy A phones. Sure, Samsung is trying to push a triple and even a quadruple camera setup on its mid-ranges, but the latter costs north of €600, which is yet another proof of the unwitting Samsung strategy.
Sony, on the other hand, had a rock-solid lineup but it didn't translate into amazing sales. All Xperia flagship were very good, especially the Xperia XZ2 Premium and the AMOLED-packing XZ3, but they didn't ring well with the consumers. The Xperia XZ2 Premium was too expensive and a bit out of touch with the modern smartphone design trends. The XZ3 was a step in the right direction design-wise but it only provided incremental upgrades over the XZ2.
Sony also released a few XA2 mid-rangers, which turned out quite nice, but they also failed to leave a mark.
HTC and LG made flagships we liked - with good designs and specs, but both companies failed to make a real difference. Once giants in what they do, now those two makers are slowly fading into irrelevance. Their upcoming flagships no longer generate the excitement we've seen in the past and leave the consumers indifferent. They also lacked memorable midrange offerings so 2019 is really going to be challenging for them.
LG was often late for the game or simply behind the competition, while the interest in HTC phones has just dried out. We still have our fingers crossed for those two and hope to see them back in people's wish lists - we will all benefit from richer competition.
HMD, which sells phones under the Nokia brand, seems to be doing quite well across the board - especially in the upper midrange. The Nokia 7.1 with HDR screen and ZEISS lens is enjoying some very good reception in various markets, probably because of its nice design and tempting features. Meanwhile, the rumors suggest the Nokia 9 might have a six-camera on its back, which will add some points to HMD's popularity, which it deparately needs because regardless how good their midrangers are, they could use a more inspiring phone in their lineup.
Xiaomi is probably the one maker that not only understands the entry-level and midrange segments pretty well, but it writes its own rules there. The Redmi Notes have been a popular choice for the entry-level, the Mi A1 and A2 are among the best mid-rangers you can get, while the Mi 8 flagships were quite feature-rich and yet affordable. The Mi Mix series has progressed very well, too and remains desirable.
The Pocophone F1 by Xiaomi turned out to be a proper market disruptor, as it offered a flagship performance and features at a jaw-dropping price. We suspect Xiaomi had to do find unorthodox methods to subsidize the phone's price such as showing ads in the UI or they even selling at a loss for the sake of establishing the new brand. But it is what it is, this one made real splashes while the rest were only producing ripples.
Realme, Oppo's ex-subsidiary, had a great year doing what the Pocophone did with the flagship class, but with mid-rangers. The Realme 1 and 2 Pro are excellent mid-rangers sold at bargain entry-level prices and its pretty much the one company that can aggressively compete with Xiaomi. And that's great, the more the merrier we'd say!
Oppo has come up with some great phones this year, too. The Find X was a true gem with that motorized slider, while the R15 and R17 models turned out quite powerful and attractive. Vivo impressed with the quirky NEX phones, too.
Huawei has been on a roll churning out great phones across all segments. It had two memorable flagship launches - those of the P20 and Mate 20 series. Its midrangers have improved significantly this year with the migration to the new Kirin 710 chip. And its Honor sub-brand is thriving, too, with the Honor Play leaving almost as big mark in the upper midrange as the Pocophone F1.
Meanwhile Apple, Google, and OnePlus offered us some great flagships, though none of these makers took any risks, so we pretty much got more of the same, but faster.
We also lost one smartphone maker this year - Gionee. The company was struggling for some time but as the story goes, its money troubles were exacerbated when Liu - founder and chairman - lost a CNY 1 billion bet ($144 million) in a casino! He claims he didn't use company money but admits he may have borrowed company funds. Regardless whether that's a true story or not, Gionee owes a total of CNY 20.2 billion (around $3 billion) to 648 creditors so its bankruptcy is as real as it gets.
Wrap up
As we already said, 2018 was a very interesting year in consumer tech. Aside from reviewing the devices which we experienced first-hand, it was most amusing to observe the trends which seemed to be a lot more dynamic than usual driven in their large part by Chinese companies.
We expect to see even more of that in 2019. CES is just behind the corner, and MWC is not far into the future either so we're eagerly waiting the new announcement of the season.
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